David Currie

Two weeks ago I managed to completely forget that it was an RR10 – this time I remembered the race but forgot my shoes! Thankfully I was wearing an old pair of trainers to drive there and, other than a slight lack of grip, I wasn’t particularly disadvantaged. The venue was a delightfully sunny Wilverley Plain. Apparently the course was the same as last year but it was new to me. I quite enjoyed it with a good selection of undulations followed by a nice flat finish. I fell in behind a couple of Southampton runners for the first half of the course and then edged ahead of them on a downhill. I was still ahead when we reached the Plain but just didn’t have any kick at the end so they both overtook me on the run in. I was, however, happy not to feel too badly the effects of either the previous evening’s run or the half of my dinner that I had eaten before going out! I was even happy to discover that I’d made it in to the top 20.

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The weather was fantastic for running on Tuesday night: bright sunshine filtering through the trees and a nice breeze to keep the midges away whilst we waited to start. We headed down to the Repitiliary this week and, yet again, I failed to see any reptiles (the closest we got was a snake skin). Heading back north we veered a bit close to the road but this did have the advantage that we didn’t hit the gravel track until we were fairly near to home. This will have been my last run from the Canadian War Memorial as it’s Emma’s birthday next Tuesday.

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Yesterday’s run from Canadian War Memorial largely stayed in the Inclosures which resulted in a bit more track running than usual. This in turn meant that we ended up crossing over ourselves a couple of times. I heard my first cuckoo of the year whilst we were out running; the less welcome wildlife were the midges waiting for us back at the car park. Driving home I experienced another truly English experience: Lyndhurst high street appeared to be closed due to Morris Dancing!

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With a different pair of shoes on I decided that my blister from the weekend could cope with an outing to the Forest. This month our start (and finish) point moved to the Canadian War Memorial, north of Emery Down. This week’s designated run was the “other two underpasses (backwards)”. Backwards meant anti-clockwise and for some reason no-one could remember ever having run the route that way before. One side effect was that we usually add a bit of a loop on to the end to kill some time – we tried to compensate for this by adding a bit of a loop on the start but failed to take long enough and therefore had to add another loop on at the other end (with some adding a bigger loop than others). Afterwards we repaired to the New Forest Inn to hear Stuart’s tails of daring do at the Marathon des Sables.

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After an enforced couple of weeks I made it back to Fritham for the last run of the month. Thankfully the afternoon rain cleared and we had a pleasant enough tour around the six ponds (clockwise this time). Canadian War Memorial next month…

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